Tomb Raider Tested, Benchmarked

Its a good day to have 7870's

Of course! However, I don't see a reason to criticize the review because he didn't expand on Nvidia's position behind their driver problems. I think what he included was sufficient enough information. Especially given the time the review was being written. There was no need for a in-depth analysis on the subject in this review.

Hypothetical situation which I don’t like to do but here we go anyway. So let’s say you are a massive fan of the Tomb Raider series and you have been holding off on an upgrade for the release of the 2013 title, based on the evidence which card should be recommended?

Radeon HD 7970 vs. GeForce GTX 680
Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 670 or 660 Ti
Radeon HD 7870 vs. GeForce GTX 660

If you look at the ultimate performance data at 1920x1200 the choice is pretty clear. But if you look at the high quality performance at the same resolution the choice is less obvious. The high quality results reflect where the Nvidia cards should be when using the ultimate quality settings after a driver update or two.

It seems obvious that Nvidia is going to fix performance when using the ultimate quality settings, by how much I don’t know. But if we go off the high quality performance which I believe will go unchanged by future driver updates when the Nvidia cards will perform quite well. This is all very hypothetical and I cannot make recommendations on hypothetical situations. I can only tell you what is fact right now and take a guess at what the future might hold, both of which we did in that article.

Because nVIDIA, TR, and Fudzilla say otherwise.
http://techreport.com/news/24463/nvidia-acknowledges-tomb-raider-performance-issues
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/30686-pc-tomb-raider’s-performance-issues-being-looked-into

Are you still on about that Tess comment I made? Sheesh. Are you sure you do research?

Game crashes w/ tessellation enabled on Nvidia cards ... - GameFAQs


www.gamefaqs.com › PC › Action Adventure › ModernShare
10 posts - 4 Mar
ForTomb Raideron the PC, a GameFAQs message board topic...On my gtx 690 this game onlycrasheswithtessellationactive....It's not a big deal, mostly because in every game, having my other 680 Classified oncaused...

You sir, just got served. I was right telling that guy to try turning it off to stop the crashes. For some reason, you think it does nothing tor crashes, because your system didn't crash because of it. Pretty damn foolish to think your computer represents everyone else's. You got the shortest straw and that's how you ended up with this test, isn't it Steve?

I never said their wasn't an issue with DoF. I and the links I posted are telling you it goes beyond that. Read them, because days before your article, these were already hitting the internet, and your article didn't reference any of the content in them. THAT is my problem.

Trying to correct you. The site is decent, but it could be better. Hence the decision to put in a comment section. Or are you saying your comment section is only for praise and worshiping the writers here?

Your testing? lol you just started putting in minimum framerates, while everyone else has moved onto frame times and latency, and you think your testing methods trump anyone elses? That's funny. The sites are getting the information from nVIDIA and Crystal Dynamics (not Creative w/e I wrote before) directly. I could care less about either of your tests. No testing you do will trump nVIDIA's and CD's testing.

As far as you doing the article last week, and you now being caught up, an update to the article will come shortly I imagine? It's only good journalism to do so since the story is in a huge thumbnail on your homepage, and not buried and forgotten.

Because it clearly was easy, and congrats! You tested a game that nVIDIA got the code for AFTER it was released! YAY! They specifically say their are multiple issues that users have and are still having. Read the articles I posted and the ones you read again, because you're missing something.

Screw all the stuff up there you thought I was saying. This is what ALL my comments were about:

You say nVIDIA has an issue with DoF.
You FAIL to go any deeper into the reason, other than to say DoF is the cause which is not proven completely.

You say a GTX 680 performs worse than a 7870.
You FAIL to even flinch. How did that not set off a red flag? Oh right, you already diagnosed it as DoF, while nVIDIA and Crystal Dynamics are obviously confused running around thinking its multiple issues with the game. You did manage a "Buy AMD" campaign though.

You say, "for now" buy AMD.
You FAIL to say for how long.

And after reading your reply:
You say you read the articles after publishing this one.
You FAIL to update your article with that information from nVIDIA themselves, or make any reference since reading them to me here in the comments. It seems you are quite stuck on DoF being THE cause.

You are convinced it's DoF.
You FAIL to prove it. Yes I believe you lost performance with it at Max. But their could be and probably is an underlying issue affecting it, but you have already made the conclusion before Crystal Dynamics and nVIDIA have, so if things don't work out for you at TechSpot, you most likely have a job troubleshooting and diagnosing at nVIDIA since you are better at it than they are.

Please update your article with the news you received after publishing it.

Hahahanoobs you are as arrogant as your name suggests. At no point did we say “buy AMD” that just never happened. We said for now AMD looks like the better choice but said through driver updates Nvidia is likely to improve performance. That is pretty much the story right there, as I said before you are taking nothing and trying to turn it into something.

OMG THANK YOU! and FINALLY!!!!
This guy gets what I'm saying. I could of swore I had self-encryption turned off.

Really? I don't see it here where it should be:
For now, those wanting to play Tomb Raider are far better off with an AMD solution as the HD 7970 GHz Edition was able to deliver more consistent performance than the GTX Titan and it offered substantially better results than the GTX 680, which ranked lower than the HD 7870.

^Nope, don't see it. Don't see it in the conclusion either. Unless you meant the part where you tell existing nVIDIA users to wait for drivers, but that can't be it because that isn't what we're talking about.

This is the last time I am going to bother replying to you about this. I have no problem with this statement…

“For now, those wanting to play Tomb Raider are far better off with an AMD solution as the HD 7970 GHz Edition was able to deliver more consistent performance than the GTX Titan and it offered substantially better results than the GTX 680, which ranked lower than the HD 7870.”

It was based on fact and those facts were showed directly above that quote.

On a side note I don’t understand how the performance issue isn’t caused by DOF. As we explained having set the quality preset to ultimate and then individually disabling or lowering each setting, running the test again and then restoring it to the ultimate value before trying the next setting we found DOF was the only setting that had a real impact on performance. The GTX Titan was 30% faster with DOF turned from ultra to normal at 1920x1200, no other setting accounted for more than a 5% increase.

The bottom line is you didn't think to use your PC gaming expertise to even try to reassure potential nVIDIA buyers reading your article to maybe tough it out a bit longer if they can. The article was about performance, not what card you should buy if you can't wait for nVIDIA.

*sigh*
The problem isn't with what you said, it's what you failed to add after it.

*sigh*
nVIDIA got the code late. It's common knowledge now. You basically tested an unfinished and unoptimized driver. DoF can and probably is the cause... right now. But without a patch and/or optimized driver (they are feverishly working on as we speak), you cannot say that is the SOLE issue. If it was it would be a quick fix, and nVIDIA certainly isn't going to blow up an issue with DoF, by saying their are MULTIPLE ISSUES.

That just wouldn't make sense, would it? No.

This has become a flame thread lol

It's so funny. Nvidia's drivers weren't ready! Stop the presses! Wait until they are ready to review them! AMD's drivers are hardly ever ready, we'd never see a CPU/GPU test if that were the case.

Linus done crysis 3 bench with amd OC vs nvi OC ,and guess who's the winner
showdown-

WOW, a Crysis 3 benchmark in a Tomb Raider Topic. Just exactly how much more irrelevant, can anyone make their comment?

I agree Cliffy thats an odd comment. In any case our detailed Crysis 3 performance article is here...

http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page5.html

And we tested with AA on as I cannot imagine end users would play without it regardless of resolution.

I'm eagerly awaiting the response from hahahanoobs when the next game which favours Nvidia comes along...

@hahahanoobs I think you and @johnnydoe should become friends.

@hahahanoobs

I have never known someone to argue you about something so lame? I mean seriously, their was nothing severely wrong with this review, at all...

wow...

"After testing each item, we found that changing DOF to normal while leaving everything else on ultra produced a 48% boost from 54fps to 80fps -- and that's with TressFX enabled as it is by default on ultra quality."

Ultra enables tressfx? I thought that's what ultimate does? So does the 680 get 80fps avg with tressfx enabled and DOF set to normal (and resolution at 1920x1200)?

No you are misunderstanding what I am saying there. Look at the screenshots of the quality settings on page 1. We are tweaking the quality settings there, NOT the quality preset.